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By now, Columbus’ bicentennial year, we were supposed to be driving the Outer-Outerbelt in
accident-proof autos and catching monorail trains at Union Station. That’s what experts told
TheColumbus Dispatch Magazine 50 years ago.

They correctly predicted that the Ohio Penitentiary, which still held prisoners near Downtown,
would be “long gone” and replaced by new development. And they were right that the city would
sprawl outside Franklin County.

Today, we’re going to take full advantage of our 2012 hindsight.

Back during the sesquicentennial, people imagined a future with electronic debit cards, organ
transplants and rental films (with no ads!) for home televisions. We’ve had those for decades.

But human interplanetary travel, buildings that float in the air and closets that clean our
clothes with sound waves? Not yet.

David Staley, an adjunct history professor and futurist at Ohio State University, said he was
struck that the predictions, while overly optimistic, were generally correct that Columbus would
expand rapidly and rely more heavily on automobiles. But he said they missed some changes
wholesale.

“There’s nothing in there about social and cultural changes, mainly about women,” he said. “They
missed the whole notion that women would have active public lives and roles in the public
sector.

“We see the values that people hold at the time reflected in their predictions.”

Nobody predicted the proverbial flying car. But the transportation advances experts did
predict a monorail, that accident-proof auto, and the Outer-Outerbelt — weren’ t all that
crazy, said Bob Lawler, transportation expert for the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.

Monorails exist elsewhere, Lawler said, but “if you look around the world, there are very few.
Other kinds of technology have proven to be more effective in urban settings.” Columbus has flirted
with commuter rail, most recently as streetcars, but it hasn’t found the political or social will
to build a system.

The 1962
article said
cars would “follow a cable buried in the middle of the traffic lane and stop when an obstruction
nears.” Today, Lawler said, similar technology is being built into the car, not the road.

“There’s more and more technology being put into vehicles to offer warnings and to help take
control and improve control,” he said. It’s not accident-proof, but “they certainly improve the
survivability of drivers and passengers.”

The Outer-Outerbelt was a gleam in the eye of road planners back then, even with I-270 ready to
start construction in 1963. You can see vestiges of the idea in Rts. 36 and 42 connecting Sunbury,
Delaware and West Jefferson to the north of Columbus.

“There are roads out there that function along those lines,” Lawler said. But a regional freeway
belt proved to be too expensive, and planners now see that it could have caused unintended
problems.

“Roads change the urban landscape because developments take place in different places,” he said.
“People thought through the consequences.”

Columbus has grown since 1962 both inside and outside the Outerbelt, though it hasn’t
encompassed all of Franklin County or become the sole governmental unit for the area, as one
predictor suggested in the sesquicentennial article.

Still, Columbus of today is the product of growth that other cities envy. Even through the
stagflation of the ’70s, the malaise of the ’80s and the Great Recession just passed, the city
continued to add residents and grow outward.

But the prognosticators of a 50-years-ago Columbus Chamber of Commerce were even more gung-ho.
By now, we were supposed to be a city of 1.5 million people in a region with 2.2 million.

Our population is about half that. But consider: in 1962, the city had just come out of the ’5
0s, a decade when Columbus’ population grew 24.7 percent. The chamber apparently saw no reason why
that rate should ever slow.

Looking back on those predictions, Staley said, you have to ask why they were made. “Are we
making predictions, or are we stating visions?” he asked. “Is it what we think will happen, or is
it what we would like to happen?”

Today, many would cringe to read that to provide water for the predicted 1.5 million residents,
the city’s service director in 1962 predicted the Big Darby Creek would be dammed to create a new
reservoir.

To keep up with growth, Columbus is digging a 9 billion-gallon reservoir in Delaware County near
the Scioto River. Meanwhile, Columbus and its neighbors have agreed to preserve the Darby, which is
considered one of the few pristine waterways in the state.

The 1962 predictors say almost nothing about the potential costs of all the growth they
expected.

Instead, here’s what all those people had to look forward to:

“Revolutionary changes in transportation, merchandising, banking, entertainment and
communications will accompany a new leisure (24-hour workweek), greater disposable income ($3,871
per capita in the year 2000, compared to today’s $2,700) and longer life through hormones,
vitamins, enzymes, nucleic acids and plastic hearts.”

That’s pretty close, though most of us are still waiting for that 24-hour workweek.

The Internet and wireless devices are just about covered under “revolutionary changes,” even if
the predictors didn’t say: “There will be a worldwide computer network that allows people to shop
and bank and communicate with just about anyone anywhere.”

Adjusted for inflation, the per-capita incomes predicted for 2000 arrived around 2010, when
census estimates put the number at $27,651 in the metro area, about the equivalent of $3,871 in
1962 dollars.

Columbus 2020, a group backed by the region’s business and political leaders, wants to increase
incomes by 30 percent in the next decade to bring them up to par with earnings in comparable
cities.

As for longer life, Americans born today can expect to live to be about 78, according to the
U.S. Census Bureau, compared with 67 for someone born in 1962.

In many ways, the 1962 predictions say more about who we were than what we’ve become.

Consider this one: “Pre-cooked, irradiated and frozen meals will have revolutionized the
housewife’s cooking chores. She will prepare menus a week in advance.”

It’s the only mention of women, proving Staley’s point that cultural changes (the women’s
movement) are tougher to predict than technological or demographic ones (smart cars and income
growth). We’re also already starting to look backward on the packaged-foods trend with an
increasing emphasis on fresh foods grown locally.

When we look forward 50 years, no doubt
sustainability and
ecology will be watchwords along with
growth and
progress. But that’s an exercise for another day.